


Better the Devil

by Michelle Christian (movies_michelle)



Category: Wiseguy
Genre: M/M, Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2010-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:58:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/movies_michelle/pseuds/Michelle%20Christian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vinnie Terranova couldn't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better the Devil

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in the zine Indigo Boys 4 in 1997, with the notation "With apologies, for Kay."

Vinnie Terranova couldn't sleep.

That was hardly an unheard of thing, of course. He'd spent more than a few nights studying the flaws in the paint on his ceiling. But he'd slept better in the last month, due in large part to the snoring presence currently plastered to his right side.

He glanced down and smiled at the top of the head there. Frank. It had been a good month. Vinnie still wasn't sure how he'd gotten from there to here, but he wasn't about to question it too much. For once, there was something that just was and it was a good something. But the month had been busy, for one thing seeing the close of the Masters fiasco. At least a few old ghosts were finally laid to rest on that case.

Ghosts.

Frank stirred, his inner clock possibly starting to let him know that the time for work was approaching. They had actually not made love last night, knowing they would have to get up early in the morning to start a new case. Frank insisted he get his self-allotted eight hours that Vinnie had been denying him each night over the last few weeks. Not that Frank complained. Much.

None of which explained why Vinnie hadn't slept more than an hour or so that night. Except for the reason that he usually didn't sleep.

Sonny.

Vinnie shifted as he made himself think that name. It felt like a pleasant sort of pain, something he took out and tortured himself with occasionally. Unfortunately, though, it had the habit of coming up and torturing him all on its own without his help. And that was just the way he reacted to the _name_.

Frank moved closer to him, waking up, but not yet awake. Frank's hands started moving around his body, cradling and comforting. Vinnie had found himself thinking of Frank several times in the last month like a terry cloth robe when he woke up like this, Frank wrapped around him, comforting and warm.

If Frank was terry cloth, Sonny had been leather molded to his skin, tight and just this side of uncomfortable. But even the discomfort was a comfort to itself, its presence never forgotten. And it was its own kind of protection, tough and fierce. He missed that second skin, that dangerous protector.

Not that Frank wasn't dangerous. Vinnie had seen him in action enough to know he had the potential to be more dangerous even than Sonny. But not to Vinnie. Frank was no threat to Vinnie and who he was, what he was. Sonny, though....

Vinnie didn't always know who he was with Sonny, what he believed. Sonny made him question and become uneasy with things he had always found comfort in. Part of that was the job, but a lot of it was just Sonny.

And why the hell was he thinking about all of this now? Vinnie reached for his lover, caressing him in return. He leaned over and captured Frank's lips in a firm wake-up kiss.

"Well, good morning to you, too," Frank half-grumbled, half-chuckled, barely opening his eyes. Vinnie took advantage of his lassitude and started kissing down his neck. "I thought I told you I wanted to get some sleep tonight."

"You've slept," Vinnie insisted, continuing to kiss down to his chest. "Either that or you need a new transmission. You snore, Francis."

Sonny had been equally difficult to wake in the morning. Actually, he wasn't that difficult to wake up, just to get out of bed. Vinnie vividly remembered all the mornings when he'd had to almost fight Sonny to get him dressed and to the office, the man like an octopus. And not a lazy one, either. Sonny was all aggression and rough affection. True, he could be hot one minute and cold the next, but it just made the extremes he went to all the sharper, his edges capable of cutting Vinnie to shreds or protect him from all comers, depending on where they were aimed.

_Stop it, fucking stop it!_ Vinnie tried to turn his mind towards his lover of the present even more, bearing down on the body beneath him with passion and desperation.

"Give an old guy a break," Frank groused, but pulled him up for more kisses. "Some of us need more rest than you."

Vinnie thrust down and against the hard-on pressed into his thigh. "Don't give me that old guy crap, Frank. You're feeling plenty spry to me."

Vinnie had been surprised how much laughter there could be in sex. Frank and he had giggled through the whole act at times. It really surprised Vinnie how plainly happy Frank had sounded in the last month, both in bed and out of it. Between Sonny and him, there had never been laughter in bed, not of the carefree kind, anyway. Sex with Sonny was cataclysmic, earth-shaking and explosive - but it was rarely what most people would call simple fun. There was no simple with Sonny, period.

Vinnie fought it, but his mind started to drift. As Frank touched him, sliding his hands up Vinnie's back, down his sides, whispering words Vinnie didn't completely understand, Vinnie remembered how Sonny's hands had felt, scratching up his thighs. That voice growling in his ear, "Yeah, ya want it, don't you, Vinnie? Yeah, I know you do." Those teeth biting his ear and his neck as his hips thrust forward. That tongue licking across his throat.

It had been so different, so... Where Frank was quiet in his passion, Sonny had been loud, growling and groaning and shouting until the windows in his penthouse shook in their frames. Whether he was over Vinnie or under him - though he was over him more often than not. Vinnie looked at the man making love to him in the present, and bit his tongue to keep himself from saying the other name. He rolled over and drew Frank fully over him in an attempt to block out the memories and replace them. And still, the image of Sonny over him wouldn't go away.

Frank looked at him seriously, intently, thrusting between his legs, never stopped touching him. "Vince," he said, but didn't say anything else, as if that was more than enough of a thought to carry him through.

"Frank," Vinnie forced out of his throat, out past the other name, head thrown back as if in passion and not struggle.

Sonny loved it like this, Vinnie on his back staring up at him, begging for Sonny to fuck him. And Vinnie loved it, too. As Frank rubbed against him, all over him, and he rubbed back, Vinnie could feel Sonny scratching his back.

"Fuck me, Frank," Vinnie demanded, and Frank didn't hesitate, just reached for the lube on the nightstand, and started to lube him up.

Frank's fingers entered him, and he felt Sonny biting his neck. He moaned and Frank bent down to lick the crease between his thigh and his hip, petting him as if to calm.

"Are you ready, Vinnie?" The voices seemed to have merged, and Vinnie didn't know if that was in his head or if Frank had really asked him that to.

"Yes," he said, sure it was a safe bet, and wanting it, even if he didn't know who it was he was saying it to.

Frank thrust into him slowly, Sonny fucking him through to his soul. Frank was perched over him, balanced on strong arms, head thrown back and eyes closed. Sometimes, it felt like Sonny was so deep inside of him that he actually felt his lover thrust into his heart, like a syringe piercing skin, shooting semen and electricity into him..

"Vinnie," he heard, whispered in each ear, and he moaned, and clutched at the body over him, pushing up to meet the thrusts into him.

"I love you, Vince," came to one ear, and "I loved you, man," in the other, and Vinnie felt the live wire jump under his hand.

And Vinnie came.

He laid there, eyes shut tight listening to his lover's breathing, Frank's semen drying stickily on his stomach, and Sonny's cooling to lead in his heart. Three sets of breathing filled the room.

This was the ultimate betrayal. In the month that he and Frank had been together, he hadn't slept with anyone else, had no desire to. He couldn't imagine doing so in the future, either. But here he was thinking of Sonny's touch while making love with Frank. That was worse than anything he could do physically with someone else, whether he and Frank made unspoken promises to each other or not.

He had told himself that he had dealt with it. That the ghost was laid to rest, and that he knew what he had done was the only thing he could have done. That Sonny had made his own choices. He told himself that he had finally come to grips with the past, with Sonny's ghost and his own guilt. But the sleepless night had not ended when he left the hospital psych ward nearly two years ago. Oh, they were fewer and farther between than they had been, but they seemed to intensify, rather than weaken. He'd simply replaced the idea that they were there because of the pain in his leg with the job stressing him out, or he was worried about the case or someone on the case. Would so-and-so figure him out? He was only thinking of Sonny because he was the archetype mark in Vinnie's head, nothing more. The same old lies and the same old fears, the good excuses he would use if Frank had asked him, the excuses he told himself so that he could go on believing he was healed and whole.

What happened when even he didn't believe the lies anymore?

If he didn't open his eyes, he thought to himself, he couldn't see Sonny standing over the bed, looking down at him and Frank. That was his theory and he was sticking to it.

"You okay, Vince?" Frank asked, his breathing, the only one Vinnie could hear anymore besides his own, slowly returning to normal. Vinnie could imagine the small worry-crease between his eyes appearing without even seeing it. "You're not usually so quiet."

Vinnie forced himself to open his eyes and look at his lover. Frank's face showed curiosity and slight concern. There wasn't anyone looking at him over Frank's shoulder.

Of course there wasn't. Why would there be?

"Just a little sleepy still, I guess," he hedged, and grabbed another kiss. "Don't worry so much." How good he'd gotten at sounding normal.

"I gotta worry; it's my job," Frank returned. And while he seemed willing to let it go for now, the worry didn't completely leave his eyes. Of course, it hadn't for about a year, at least. Frank never said anything, though. Vinnie sometimes forgot, Frank was just as good at ignoring the stuff he wanted to as Vinnie himself was. "C'mon, big guy," Frank said, pushing himself up and towards the day. "We gotta hit the road. Those pine trees won't wait forever."

He didn't go far, though, because in seconds, he was back standing by the bed and grasping Vinnie's arm, looking seriously into his eyes. "We're gonna talk about this later, Vince."

"Yeah," Vinnie said, closing his eyes and sliding his own hand down to catch Frank's, grasping it like a lifeline to normal. "Later."

He just hoped he lasted until later came.

-30-


End file.
